The Play and Other Stories

These tough urban tales present characters beset by bizarre bureaucracies, real and imagined city violence, and private hells of their own making. A man who witnesses a baby falling to its death from an apartment building begins to hallucinate his own child tumbling from his apartment window-he finally has to leave the city to retain his sanity. Evicted from his apartment and dumped by his lover, another character is offered ten thousand dollars by an eccentric, only to be arrested for counterfeiting. Unifying these seventeen stories is the characters' ability to find inner reserves that enable them to continue their struggle to make an uneasy peace with friends, lovers, the city, and themselves.